A policy that would remove the ownership of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG, cylinders from consumers, is currently being drafted, the Federal Government has revealed.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, represented at a stakeholders’ forum by Brenda Ataga, on Tuesday, said the policy would require that the ownership of the cylinders rests strictly with the dealers and distributors.
He added that this was part of strategy to deepen the penetration of LPG, also known as cooking gas and address issues of safety. .
She revealed that the FG had reached an agreement with two original cylinder manufacturers to deliver 600,000 cylinders to LPG distributors on credit, with a pre-payment period of 18 months. .
She noted that the Federal Government would, in the next couple of days, commence the clampdown of illegal roadside LPG dealers, while he directed all skid operators of LPG to immediately convert their outlets to micro distribution centres before the enforcement begins. .
“The MDCs will essentially create and introduce into the market what we call the cylinder exchange programme, whereby the cylinders are owned by the distributors.
There is no need for you to decant for anybody that comes in, and that eliminates illegal risks as well. You would fill them at the refill plants that would be tied to you and exchange it with your customers.
Your customers pay for only the content, while you own the cylinders and control the management of those cylinders.
It is for us to be able to, at any point in time, discern and discover cylinders that are bad, cylinders that need recertification and cylinders that need to be removed from circulation.
We put that onus on distributors going forward, to support the safe and standard method of selling LPG. I tell you today that Nigeria is the only country in West Africa that does not practice the re-circulation model. .
Everyone has moved away from this because again, most of the population cannot afford cylinders; so, you have to remove that cost from them. Our plan with LPG is to create about 500,000 jobs,” she added
